Book Review: Star Trek, History and Us: Reflections of the Present and Past Throughout the Franchise by A.J. Black. McFarland, 2021 Jason M. Barr May 26, 2021 A.J. Black's book is a thought-provoking ...

Jason M. Barr April 14, 2026 Stefan Al’s latest book is Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026). His previous book was Supertall: How the World’s Tallest Build...

Jason M. Barr and Ronan C. Lyons October 22, 2025 The citizens of New York City are gearing up to pick a new mayor. On one side stands a candidate riding a wave of anger among those struggling to pay ...

Jason M. Barr September 29, 2025 Public housing remains a controversial subject. On the one hand, America’s government-owned and operated housing stock is widely viewed as worse than the privately own...

Jason M. Barr August 13, 2025 Say an apartment building begins to decay visibly, does it increase the likelihood that buildings around it will also decay? We know that tough economic conditions can im...

Jason M. Barr August 5, 2024 A few weeks ago, I was walking in Central Park on the Upper West Side. As I strolled past some benches near the Diana Ross Playground, I saw a young man, likely in his lat...

Jason M. Barr January 22, 2025 If you google the definition of “emergency,” the search engine provides an answer from the Oxford Languages Dictionary: “a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situa...

Abstract. Manhattan, as the world’s greatest vertical city, is the result of a collective striving; its skyscrapers are the physical manifestation of this

Jason M. Barr June 30, 2025 What is the best way to keep housing affordable? Well, to the former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), the obvious answer was to restrict landlords’ ability t...

Jason M. Barr May 7, 2024 On May 14, my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Building was released by Scribner Books. You can order a copy and sign up for my email list here....

The Secret Man Behind the World’s Most Visible Building By Jason M. Barr and Ann Berman And yet almost all the stories about the origins of this New York landmark [the Empire State Building], onli...

Jason M. Barr May 21, 2024 Note: On May 14, my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest for the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers was published by Scribner Books. This post summarizes some of the myths and misconc...

Jason M. Barr December 23, 2020 The Space Race At the end of the Roaring Twenties, New York City witnessed a three-way race for the world’s tallest building. First was the Bank of Manhattan Building, ...

Jason M. Barr July 15, 2020 Captain Kirk: It exists on the hate of others. Mr. Spock: To put it simply. And it has acted as a catalyst, creating this situation in order to satisfy that need. --In “Day...

In April the state passed a law allowing congestion pricing in Manhattan. When implemented in 2020, drivers will be charged a fee to enter the island south of 60th Street. While the plan is reasonable...

Jason M. Barr July 15, 2020 Captain Kirk: It exists on the hate of others. Mr. Spock: To put it simply. And it has acted as a catalyst, creating this situation in order to satisfy that need. --In “Day...

Jason M. Barr May 21, 2024 Note: On May 14, my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest for the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers was published by Scribner Books. This post summarizes some of the myths and misconc...

Jason M. Barr December 23, 2020 The Space Race At the end of the Roaring Twenties, New York City witnessed a three-way race for the world’s tallest building. First was the Bank of Manhattan Building, ...

Jason M. Barr and Gabriel Ahlfeldt August 17, 2020 The Bricks of Ego When most people look up at supertall skyscrapers, like the Burj Khalifa or the Shanghai Tower, they assume they have been construc...

The tallest building of its day opened as the Great Depression really began to squeeze the American economy. Was the Empire State Building a gigantic folly perpetrated by men with sky-scraping egos? F...

The Secret Man Behind the World’s Most Visible Building By Jason M. Barr and Ann Berman And yet almost all the stories about the origins of this New York landmark [the Empire State Building], onli...

The Secret Man Behind the World’s Most Visible Building By Jason M. Barr and Ann Berman And yet almost all the stories about the origins of this New York landmark [the Empire State Building], onli...

The Big Apple has earned a new nickname.

Jason M. Barr May 7, 2024 On May 14, my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Building was released by Scribner Books. You can order a copy and sign up for my email list here....

This posts revisits the debate about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs in New York City, and argues that we need to move on in the 21st century.

Skyscrapers get a bad rap but are crucial to the success of cities, writes economics professor Jason Barr.

Jason M. Barr March 6, 2025 Note: This post is the second of two on the drivers of Gotham’s historically low vacancy rates. You can read Part I here. New York’s rental housing vacancy rate is 1.4%—the...

Jason M. Barr October 29, 2024 Let’s travel back a century—to New York during the Roaring Twenties. On our journey, we will see a very different Gotham--not just flappers, speakeasys, and the new jazz...